


Known Entity

by cognomen



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Animal Death, F/M, Pre-Relationship, animal cruelty, heist job, nonstandard internal narrative, vaguely animate pile of rags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-09
Updated: 2018-03-09
Packaged: 2019-03-29 03:03:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13918029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cognomen/pseuds/cognomen
Summary: To say he doesn’t think about it isn’t true. Blast behind him. Shattered space. Scales tipping even again. The white dog turns and bites the black.What’s the saying? DJ’s thoughts aren’t always clear. The black dog eats the food, white dog takes the blame?Burst of interstellar static on the official comms frequency. Sound of lives and souls and bodies and machines frying up. Blinking out. Same sound a hard drive makes when you fry it; wailing. End.In a million years a dumb animal on a planet on the outer rim will blink up at a bright flash in the night. The last trace of this will be gone.





	Known Entity

To say he doesn’t think about it isn’t true. Blast behind him. Shattered space. Scales tipping even again. The white dog turns and bites the black.

_ What’s the saying? _ DJ’s thoughts aren’t always clear.  _ The black dog eats the food, white dog takes the blame? _

Burst of interstellar static on the official comms frequency. Sound of lives and souls and bodies and machines frying up. Blinking out. Same sound a hard drive makes when you fry it; wailing. End. 

In a million years a dumb animal on a planet on the outer rim will blink up at a bright flash in the night. The last trace of this will be gone. 

Machine that eats up lives and bodies and spits out dissent. DJ warned them, but that pair wasn’t real good at listening. Ears too full of bright shiny things they  _ wanted _ to hear. Needful things kept out. Warded off.

DJ slides outside all that. Collected money already spent, greedy galaxy. Systemic. Goods for credits for goods. Services performed for people who couldn’t themselves.

Doesn’t do anything so sappy as hope Rose and Finn survive. Doesn’t look back. Does think about it later. Back to Cantonica.

“I was about to call out a bounty on your head, slicer,” deep voice. Square jaw. Stoneskin, inhuman. Fingers reached out to flick the metal plate on his hat. “Figured you botched the job and ran.”

“The job was not as described to me,” DJ answers. Understatement. “As you asked, I did.”

“That sounds like an excuse to me. We all know how Sturg Ganna feels about excuses.”

DJ does. Pointless to counterpoint how  _ he _ feels about going into a job blind. Half the information. Half a job. Fair shakes until you got too important.

“Payment in full,” DJ says. Hates to take a loss. Hates to die more. “G-Give my regards to Sturg.”

Happy to walk away. Just enough in his pocket to drop a credit in the slots on his way out. Five casino tokens pour out of the belly. Misses the droid the most. Good intuition. Pockets the casino chips as a memento. 

“Hatukga,” he breathes; swear and prayer to luck, both. Leaves the lights behind. Fathier hooves  pounding track dirt. Not even a week shut down.

Throw a stone in the wheel. Break your body on the apparatus. Feels good, bright flash quick. Doesn’t hurt the people at the top. Hurts the fingers of the sweepers. Aches the bones of the repairmen, putting the facade back up. A little money changes hands for the convenience. Rapidity.

DJ doesn’t believe there really is a way to change all this. 

A dozen First Order ships shattered now lay heavy on the backs of those who will be forced (coerced, made) to repair them. Make others rich as  _ they _ labored. 

Only money made you free. All the fighting, all the great gobbling gears of the machine only made freedom for  _ other people _ . Can't say that to the fighters.

Debts paid. DJ keeps the uniform but doesn’t wear it. Boots are good. Hangs it up in the closet. Could come in useful later. Fuels ship, plans on being off the planet by the time anyone thinks to check the serial number. 

The sound of blaster fire and animal cries from the blowgrass fields. Disrupting the early morning silence and darkness. Edge of the manmade ocean, only place anything grows on Cantonica anymore. Captive green and blue. Cultivated. Being cleansed of pests.

Tells himself not to look. Does anyway. Bright flashes low over the tall grass. Panicked herd of Fathiers running. Bright flash. Falling. Less animals. Collapsing by slow increments, haunting cries. Too much work to round up. Won’t be left to damage the view for the Canto Bight visitors. Disposable.

The main work is done by police flyer. Sudden, bright. Quick. Enough force to be painless on a direct hit. Vaporized. Behind the herd a group of men with sticks. Beating the grass. Driving them. Cleanup. 

Low thuds pull DJ’s attention from the distant scene to something closer. Forceful air. Breaths. Tall grass parts in front of him. Dumb-eyed face, long nosed. Soft, hanging ears twice as wide as the skull. Panting. Sad, well-deep eyes fixed on him. Begging. Desperate. Doesn’t understand why pain is all its ever known before death. 

“Get lost,” Dj orders. Doesn’t listen. Steps forward, toward the open door of his ship. Shelter. Warm hay smelling breath presses on his face. Unafraid of him.

Moment of stillness, then leaps onto the ship. Ducks tall head to get in and hide.

Sure. Alright. Just keep going. DJ turns to get inside, reaching up to hit the button.

“Halt!” Official voice. Unfamiliar. Regimental. Police. No one he knows.

DJ puts his hands up. Turns. Shows his palms. Police officer aiming a blaster at him. No nicknames from this one.

“I need to search your ship. There are animals being eliminated from this area.”

Doesn’t want his ship searched. Stolen ship. Bad idea. Bad for his stowaway, too. 

“J-just going,” Dj says, fingers in the air and spread at shoulder height. “Haven’t seen any animals.”

Officer doesn’t trust him. Shouldn’t. 

“You sure? It was headed this way.”

“No, man,” Dj says, hopes the animal stays quiet. “I can p-prove it.”

Doesn’t know why he says it, but the instinct is good. Reaches down slowly for his pocket.

Officer goes tense. Grip on blaster changes. Soft world; anywhere else, DJ would be shot. More used to bribes than blasters.

Produces the five casino chips from his pocket. Offers out. Sugar cubes for a nervous animal. Officer understands; chips worth more than he makes in three days. DJ knows.

Trades his momento away as a bribe.

“You’ll never see me again,” DJ promises. Probably true. No reason to come back to Cantonica.

Officer considers for only a moment before he seizes the casino chips. Disappears them into his pockets. Just business. 

“Well then, be on your way.”

DJ leaves him. Big animal taking up most of the main hold of the ship. Breathing slower.

“You better be a g-good flyer.”

Leaves muddy hoofprints on the Libertine’s pure white rug. Belongs no more than DJ does. Well. Easy come, easy go. Be fitting, if when the owner eventually reclaims this tub, there was a big pile of dung in the lounge. 

 

-

 

Doesn’t expect to run into them again so soon. Should be off licking their wounds. Shouldn’t be alive. Their good luck, his bad.

Reels the  _ Libertine _ in. Fish on a line. Just waste fuel to struggle.

Fathier lifts its head when the ship jerks. No answer for it. Shrugs at the animal.

“Hold for boarding.” Comms overridden. Means business. 

DJ sends the fathier out first to defuse the situation. Still walks out with his hands up. Happens a lot lately. Familiar faces making scrunched-up angry eyes behind blaster sights. End of his luck. 

For now.

Rose looks confusion between him and the men subduing the fathier. Couldn’t sell it. No pedigree. Should have spent the money on better boots. 

Finn doesn’t shoot him.  _ Does _ hit him. Not in the face, personal, but in the gut to hurt. Soft vitals unprotected by upraised hands. Wiser to take the hit, blasters everywhere. Looks at DJ like he wishes there was an excuse to shoot him.

“Lock him up. Search him first,” Finn orders. Big deal, turns out. Giving orders. DJ files the info away for later.

Two guards move forward. Take DJ’s hands. Put them in binders. Doesn’t resist. 

Finn paws his hat off his head. Seen some of his tricks. Not all. Enough that they take his coat. Everything but his pants. Little grey box meant for storage to hold him. Not a cell originally. Been in worse predicaments. 

Sits down. Waits. Suspects it will be a while.

 

-

 

“Why did it have to be him?” Rose complains, feeling angry and confused. “Doesn’t that dirty roach know when to go to ground?”

She wishes she’d never seen hima gain. The rest, she just doesn’t get. Why had he gone back to Canto Bight? Why was there a  _ fathier _ on his ship?

“Are you really surprised?” Poe asks, arms crossed as he watches Finn and Rose pace it out. “That sort of guy always seems to turn up again when you don’t want them.”

“Do you think he stole that fathier?” Rose asks. She’s pretty sure she  _ recognizes _ it. It’s the matriarch of the herd, the one they’d rode through Canto Bight and that she’d let free. No one has an answer for her.

“This could be good,” Leia says, finally joining the conversation. Finn and Rose both turn to stare at her. 

“We need a slicer,” Leia says, pointing out the obvious facts that they all know and have been trying to avoid. “ _ He’s _ a slicer.”

“Ma’am, we don’t want him,” Finn starts.

“He’s a no-good-two-timing-sellout!” Rose explodes before she remembers she’s talking to the General and reins in her ire. “Ma’am.”

“We can’t use him,” Finn agrees. “I barely even want to  _ look _ at him.”

Leia listens to their complaints, and then holds up one hand when they start trying to find more.

“We need to get our hands on that tracking process the First Order has,” Leia says, trading a look with Poe. “Gathering new recruits won’t mean anything until we can protect them from being hunted down.”

Rose curses internally, knowing that Poe is absolutely going to agree with Leia’s good sense. Neither of them  _ know _ .

“To do that, we need to get people onto one of their ships,” Leia continues.

“Can’t we go back and try to get the Master Codebreaker for real this time?” Poe asks.

“That worked so well the  _ last _ time,” Leia says. “Besides, he could be anywhere in the galaxy by now and time is of the essence. Right now, we know where the Supremacy is. It can’t go anywhere. Which means all the Star Destroyers in the First Order fleet will have to go to it for repairs.”

“And a whole lot of them need repairs right now,” Poe agrees. 

“If we can get ahold of the technology, we can reverse engineer it,” Leia says. “Maybe even before they’re ready to start chasing us again. It’s important, or I wouldn’t be pushing so hard.”

“I know,” Finn says, “but this guy is bad news. He turned on us at the first sign of trouble and got half of our escape shuttles destroyed.”

Leia accepts this point. “Well, can you think of another way to get past the shields undetected?”

Rose can’t think of any good way without a slicer.

“Trust the blessings the Force gives you,” Leia says. “And carry a blaster for backup.”

-

 

DJ expects a riot act. Short sentence in a big airlock. Instead, they come to him and put down a plan. Bad plan. Nothing good in it. Got no choice. This or the end. While they outline it, the events of the last few days live in his thoughts. Play on speed-up. Lots.

“Will you do it?” It’s Rose that asks. 

The world speeds up enough to catch up to DJ for an instant. To connect him to it, and it to him. 

“Y-” he stutters it, clicks his teeth closed as his words try to catch pace with and connect with his thoughts. He starts again. Hits the first sound hard. Bulls through. “You shouldn’t trust me.”

Rose’s face changes. Eyes hard. Dark. Little angry button eyes, accusatory (teddy bear). Brows scrunch. Here expecting to hate him. Trying hard to follow through; keep a promise to herself.

People inside the program make a lot of promises to themselves. 

Finn’s face is just hard. Closed. Waiting to bang the gavel and close the case.

“But you should take me anyway,” DJ says. Engaged with the moment. It’s honesty. No one likes to hear it, he finds.

“ _ Why? _ ” Finn asks, clipped.

DJ shrugs. Everybody wants answers. For the truth, for lies. Quantify. Everything. Make a box, get in it. Whole galaxy.

“Because we know what he’ll do already,” Rose says. Insight. Lights on.

“What?” Finn’s voice changes. Attention on Rose, now. DJ finds an offensively fuzzy spot on his left (their right) canine and works on it with the top flat of his tongue.

“Anyone else we can get is a gamble,” Rose says. Looks at DJ corner-eyed, continues to talk around his presence. Like he’s not there. Used to it. “They could lie and not be able to do it, or play it charming and sell us out.”

“ _ He _ sold us out!” Finn reminds. Wild gesture stabbed DJ’s direction. Fuzzy spot beginning to buff clean on his teeth. 

“Exactly,” Rose says. “We already know what to expect.”

Finn’s not convinced. Still learning about conviction. Posture of a trooper, DJ would recognize it. Anytime, anywhere. Had enough run-ins to know posture doesn’t make winners.

“Rosey’s right,” DJ says. Helpful. Hoping to waste less time.

“Don’t call her that,” Finn snarls. Hit a nerve. Unexpected. 

DJ raises his hands to shoulder level, shows their emptiness. Pushes against Finn’s anger with a dislodging gesture. 

“S-sorry,” DJ says. Polite to say. More polite to  _ mean _ . He doesn’t.

“If we get caught again he’s just going to take the easy way out and save his own skin,” Finn says.

“So, we don’t get caught,” Rose hisses back. “Ideally.”

When Finn tosses a dirty look in DJ’s direction, DJ gestures his solidarity with Rose’s last statement. Indicates wisdom and correctness in the statement. Seems simple. Morals aren’t simple; make things complicated. ‘Don’t’ is better.

“And,” DJ adds on his own behalf. “I can do what you want.”

-

Rose tells herself she doesn’t like it, but also that it’s the practical decision to make. Time is of the essence, and they don’t have enough of it to track down another slicer. 

And, well; he was  _ good _ at slicing. She’d never seen anyone get through even a normal Star Destroyer’s shield undetected, let alone the flagship. Maz Kanada seems to think only one person is capable.

Then again, Maz had a bias about the Master Codebreaker’s  _ capabilities _ that Rose didn’t want to think too much about. 

Nope, too late. Rose is thinking about  _ exactly _ what Maz must have meant. It’s not the usual sort of image fantasy she entertains.

Especially when she’s sitting in a shuttle with two other people, one of whom she does  _ not _ want to relate to the sexy slicer image in any way, shape, or form.

Finn’s quiet. He doesn’t like this, and he’s wearing a sour expression on his face. He alternates staring at DJ and refusing to look at him.

DJ is quiet, too. It seems to be sort of a fundamental part of his personality. After their first meeting, Rose had attributed it to, well,  _ scheming _ . Plotting. Evil guy stuff. Now it’s—well, it’s just as much not like that as it was the first time, without her hindsight-hatred goggles on. It helps that he seems to have lost the First Order uniform in favor of more beat up and tired clothes like they’d first found him in. Rose wonders—

“What’d you do with all those credits the First Order gave you for selling us out?” Finn breaks the silence at last with a hostile question.

“New boots,” DJ says, absently. The pair on his feet are—still pretty filthy, but under all that they’re solid. Without the weakness in structural integrity that age and hard wearing brings. Rose knows. She’d grown up on the mining colonies where nothing was thrown away until it disintegrated. You wore what you had or nothing, and getting replacements even when you needed them was nearly impossible.

Not that she thinks it’s a sentiment DJ understands in the same way, of course. How could he understand  _ anything _ about anything, and still just be out for himself?

“ _ Boots _ ?” Finn demands, incredulous.

DJ comes all the way back to lucidity, eyes rolling down from the upper left of thought and focusing on Finn. It leaves Rose wondering what kind of substances are intermixing in his bloodstream at any given time. Maybe he’s just  _ like _ this. 

“New boots,” DJ repeats, and adds, stuttering, “Old d-debts. Enough left over for the fuel we’re burning.”

The answer makes complete sense to Rose. DJ isn’t the sort to be on Cantonica because he belongs there. He’s not the rich kind, or the tourist kind, but the desperate kind. The kind of cath wolf that was  hungry enough to try and bring down a fully grown bantha on his own.

Finn can’t believe this guy, which is written with Finn’s best ‘ _ can-you-believe-this-guy? _ ’ expression on his face. “All that blood money to pay a debt?”

DJ makes a complicated hang-dog sort of expression with his complicated hang-dog sort of face. To Rose’s extreme irritation she understands it perfectly, finds the word coming out of her mouth before she can stop herself.

“You’d rather he be living it up on muy-thais and caviar in a mansion somewhere?” Rose asks.

DJ points at her with both hands  enfolded together and the first two fingers extended in a blaster-like shape. She glares at him until he stops.

At least this way, he’s not really benefiting from all that. 

“Uh,” DJ says, as if he’s about to argue but he thinks better of it when Finn and Rose both glare at him. “I could use some time to f-focus.”

Rose wants to tell him where he can stuff his focus. He can just work it out. But it’s childish and also selfish, putting her own anger above the possible success of the mission and the Resistance needs this. She turns back to the flight controls, and forces her mind to focus, hoping Finn will take her lead on just— _ ignoring _ their annoying problem.

Why had she ever agreed to this? Why had it seemed like a good idea? Surely her head is screwed on backwards to even get onto the same ship with him again.

Except, it’s too late now.

 

-

 

Security codes in the First Order are all unique. Each flagship everchanging, encrypted. It’s a process. Systemic. No human hand on the rudder.

Supposed to keep corruption out. No one needs to watch. Just the results. DJ cuts into the stream of the Star Destroyer’s unwatched security codage. Slice in. Old stream interrupted. New stream interposed. No one can notice that one number doesn’t fit pattern. No pattern to fit.

“Almost there,” DJ tells his anxious passengers. Sequence buttons. Timing right. Slide it in, proxy key. For an instant, DJ is in two places. Split. Picking a locked safe from his living room. 

Almost a tangible thing to feel when the door-concept swings open for him. Rose  _ knows _ . Senses, reads. Doesn’t have to tell her when to guide the ship in. Easier this time, without flagship failsafes. Single layer. Stupid.

“Did you just do the same thing again?” Finn asks. Angry again. Unsatisfied. 

“D-don’t fix the unbroken,” DJ explains, leaning back. Slightly different. New method. No explaining to Finn a new version of the same trick. Won’t matter, fiddly details. Finn doesn’t slice.

“Won’t they  _ know _ ?” Finn demands. “Didn’t they want to know how we got onto the Supremacy as part of letting you go?”

DJ’s mind slows down from the speed of code. The world operates as an anchor. Back in time weeks. Standing on a deck. Binders on his wrists. Questions fired at him by a cog in a system. Squinty eyes, mouth sharp. Stripes on his collar that he could paint on his dick. System man; fitting DJ in a box. Didn’t care if limbs stuck out. Pats his own back.

"They asked only stupid questions," DJ reveals. Hit it on the first attempt. Glad. More stupid questions incoming. 

“We’re wasting time,” Rose says.  _ Smart. _ DJ could like her. Does.

That’s new. 

 

-

 

Rose tries not to worry about this. She tells herself just to keep an eye on the slicer and if he makes any sign of a wrong move, or they get caught again, she’ll just blast him herself. Funny enough, she kinda thinks he’d understand. The guy is—well, weird doesn’t cover it. She’d grown up on a broken half-crushed mining colony. She’d experienced a lot of weird.

_ Whatever _ he is, she thinks as she watches his clever fingers work wires loose from the panel, he’s smart too. He’s a jerk, and selfish, and looks a little bit like some kind of rogueish trash heap with sleepy not-stupid eyes, but he’s got a what a lot of other  _ regular _ jerks don’t; the ability to deliver.

Besides, Finn had been kind of a jerk when Rose first met him, too. Rose forgives him, and she knows better, now. She’s met Rey. Finn wasn’t running away, not exactly, he was going  _ to _ Rey. His head had been on wrong.

Lots of heads had been at the time, Rose thinks. Captain-Commander Dameron’s, even Luke Skywalker’s, the way Rey tells it. She forgives herself, too.

DJ hooks his pad in while Rose and Finn watch the empty corridors. The ship is shielded, still in the construction line. No occupants except workers who are all on the upper levels and the cameras to watch the workers. Why patrol the individual ships, when the whole sector of space was patrolled with Star Destroyers? It’d be crazy to try this, to break in. Dumb and desperate.

_ That’s _ what it is. She can’t help the familiar feeling of worry as DJ works. This isn’t identical to Snokes’ ship, but the surroundings are near enough that anxious deja voux sets in as they get close to the point where they failed last time.

“Can’t you do this any faster?” Finn snaps, feeling the same tension Rose does. DJ seems immune. He also doesn’t seem to think that needs an answer, and with a final, definitive set of taps, and a pause of several seconds while the code waits to kick in, he springs the door, revealing the circuit and tracker core. 

“Yes!” Rose squeaks, overcome.  _ This _ time, it will be different,  _ this _ time for sure. She can see the core of the starship she standing in, lit up and brilliant, like hope. She only realizes she’s trotting toward it when DJ’s hand catches her upper arm, quick and strong but without hurting her. It’s faster than she’d been aware he could move if he wasn’t coding. The two healed cats-whisker scars on his cheek move with his expression. 

“Five minutes from when that core is out it b-b-” the urgent message stalls out on his stutter, and she sees self-directed impatience flash on his features. “ _ Has _ to be on our ship.” 

“It’s six minutes until they even…” Rose starts to say, but then she realizes what he means. “It’s protocol to lock everything down when the core’s offline.

DJ puts a grimy, soiled finger on his own nose. The bulkheads will drop and lock, and without the core to transmit an open code, they’d have to be opened individually. They’d be trapped, unless they had the core where it needed to be by the time the bulkheads started sealing. 

“What’s that mean?” Finn demands. “Can’t you disable it? You’re a slicer.”

DJ gives an expansive shrug. It’s too much to explain right now, standing in a vulnerable position. Finn looks hostile, so Rose steps in.  _ Not _ because she wants to defend DJ, but because getting into it now isn’t going to help any of them get out of here again.

She grabs a lifter-driver from the side corridor and leads Finn into the belly of the beast. 

All the better to cut the beating heart out of it.

“He’s setting us up again,” Finn says, as Rose gets to work disconnecting the physical moorings of the core. 

“No, he told the truth,” Rose says. She wishes Finn would stop making her defend that slimeball, but if he’d stop and think about it, he’d know it would make sense.

“He’s supposed to be a-”

“Slicer,” Rose agrees. “But we’re about to cut the brain out of the system. You ever seen a snake without a head?”

“Yeah,” Finn says, and then he opens his mind to how much he knows about star destroyers. “Oh!”

“Without a central control force, the individual parts revert to individual operations,” Rose explains, glancing back at DJ to make sure he’s ready for her to cut one of the main two harnesses.

DJ nods at her and winks, his hands deep in the alarm control guts. Her heart does something funny, she tells herself it’s  _ just _ nerves, and absolutely not DJ’s crooked shabby smile and what satisfaction looks like on his face.

“Catastrophic protocol,” Finn says, picking up the thread of her explanation as she severs the first connection, leaving the failsafe. “They all close because normally a disconnect is due to structural damage and decompression.”

“Right,” Rose says, she points at part of the core. “Put your gloves on and hold there.”

Finn does as she says, putting on heavy thermal gloves that will protect him from the freezing coolant layer, and the processor core from oils and skin cells and other biological contaminants on his hands. 

“Unfortunately, as a side effect, even though no one expects someone to try and steal a core drive, it’s very effective if all the bulkheads lock closed when they don’t get a regular connection cycle signal,” Rose explains, knowing that Finn is following along. When he has hold of the core, she checks with DJ again.  _ Ready? _

His eyes meet hers, alight with mischief and alive, and for an instant she’s afraid he’s betrayed them again. Then sparks fly out of the panel he’s working on and he nods to her. Rose realizes it’s just excitement for the challenge, and remembers that betrayal had looked different.

_ Not so unattached from the world after all _ ,  she thinks, and cuts the failsafe. Finn grunts as the heavy core goes dark and drops into his arms with its full weight.

Rose grabs her own set of gloves and helps Finn lift the core onto the hover-lifter, and then they’re off. Rose’s heart is hammering, her eyes boring into the disguised back of the man in front of them. Has he already betrayed them? Some clever way with the code? They’re already further than she’d expected, but maybe it’s all just to get them to let their guards down, put them where he wants them.  _ Maybe he’s been working for the First Order the whole time. _

Or, maybe, she’s just all keyed up for nothing. She finds she wants to trust DJ, for him to take this chance and really prove he is at least what he says he is. Of course, that means nothing has to go wrong.

They make it to the elevator, waiting what seems like an interminable amount of time for it to lift them and their cargo from the heart of the ship to the level they’d left the shuttle on. 

“Two minutes,” DJ mutters, as he hides the activity of the elevator from the rest of the ship.

“We’d better run,” Finn says, keying himself up. Rose agrees, tightening her grip on the lift controls. 

DJ reaches out and does something to the lift, ignoring Finn’s glare. When the elevator door opens and Rose works the controls the repulsor lift surges forward at her command, faster than before.

There’s also a pair of stormtroopers in security colors examining the panel they’d pulled off the far wall to gain access into the ship. Rose’s heart sinks.  _ No! _ They’re so  _ close. _

Finn charges forward, yelling, hoping to distract them from calling for backup. DJ’s hand closes over Rose’s on the lift controls, warmer than she expected, and rougher. She wheels on him, hissing her anger. Something in his expression stops her. He revs the drive engine on the lift. She gets it.

“Finn!” she shouts, giving him time to react to (she hopes) jump out of the way before the repulsor lift with its heavy load slams into the pair of guards.

It works. Finn leaps aside, leaving the guards confused and then slammed into each other, and run under by the heavy lift as it bucks over them, breaking armor and the bodies beneath. Finn lunges to grab the blaster from one, glancing at DJ as he does, and Rose guesses he’s right not to let his guard down even as she gets the lift moving again, aiming it through the hole in the paneling.

Without checking his chrono, or any other sign of external input, DJ warns, “Sixty seconds.”

She believes him, that he’s been keeping track by some internal method.

She guns it, and Finn has to scramble to keep up. DJ bolts ahead, suddenly, and Rose’s heart sinks. There’s only one bulkhead between them and their ship. They aren’t going to make it, and DJ is going to leave them. After all, it’s not  _ his _ mission to get the core, just to get them in and out again. She can’t even blame him for not wanting to get captured with them again. After all, she plans on shooting him if that happens.

He turns around at the bulkhead, whistles for her attention, and holds up his hand as if to catch something. Anger floods her. Does he still want to get  _ paid _ ? Her hand goes to her necklace, instinctively knowing what he wants. She throws it—what does it matter  _ anyaway? _ —and hopes it hits him in the head.

He catches it instead, yanking open a panel at the bulkhead controls and even as she sees the bulkhead door start to close—she’s  _ so _ close now—DJ yanks a handful of wires out of the guts of the starship and then jams her necklace into the space, sparks flying. The closing door slows to a crawl as Rose and Finn and the lift fly beneath the closing door in a breathless heartbeat, an instance in time that shouldn’t be more than a few seconds in length.

Yet she registers all the details; DJ’s body goes rigid in the distinctive way that Rose recognizes as current going through a living conductor. Sparks blast out of the open panel. The bulkhead door stops briefly, and they pass under it. Then time—and the door—starts moving again and Rose’s heart lurches into her throat for a second time. He’s  _ not _ —he  _ can’t _ be—DJ has to make it out.

There aren’t inches to spare when he slides under the door. It scrapes his cheek and his ribs nearly stick and for a second Rose thinks she’s going to see the bulkhead cut him in  _ half _ . She squeezes her eyes shut, aware that she’s yelling, Finn’s yelling, and then of the sound of the bulkhead door slamming shut with a clanging finality. 

It takes a minute for her to get up the courage to open her eyes again. No one’s screaming, anyway. From here, she can see the top of DJ’s head, and can’t quite tell if he’s far enough from the closed barrier to have made it.

Suddenly, he holds up an arm over his head, and Rose sees he still has her necklace, and his hand looks a bit burnt.

Rose laughs, relieved more than she had expected. It floods through her, like a victory or a warm surprise. 

“Ugh,” Finn sees it too. “I guess you go get him. I’ll get this on board. We better get out of here before they figure out where we are.”

Rose rushes forward like maybe she hadn’t needed to be told, but by the time she reaches DJ he’s already getting stiffly to his feet. One of them is bare. She can see his naked and dirty toes.

“Hmm,” he says, looking down as if he’s counting them, too. 

Rose can see the top of the boot protruding just a little from under the door, but the rest of it is crushed and trapped beneath.

So much for his new boots. He gives Rose a sidelong glance that so clearly expresses his hangdog disappointment with the situation that Rose has to laugh. DJ’s mouth twists into something like humor, too. He hands back the necklace, takes off his other boot, and heads onto the ship with no particular hurry in his swaggering, silent gait.

 

-

 

She looks at him different now. Soft. He likes it, even if it doesn’t mean she understands.

Building a new box for him. Constructing eventual disappointment for herself.

“I knew it,” she says.

He doubts it. Waits. Elaboration is inevitable. 

“I knew you felt bad about—”

He shakes his head. “Bad b-business to let repeat customers fall behind.”

Unpaid if he left them. Pointless waste of time. DJ studies his stiff hands, flexes his fingers. No use for heroics.

Recovery time. Profit margin getting thinner. Rose still looking at a bigger shadow than he casts. Transformative. He could like filling that shadow. He could like  _ her.  _ Does.

“Well, we have what we wanted and everyone gets to walk out unscathed,” Finn says, begrudging. Glad, too. Evolving. 

“I know!” Rose tears her eyes away from DJ. Points them to the cabin floor. Cargo hold

He feels the pride, too. Good heist. Just smooth enough.

“Do you think we’ll really be able to figure this out before they change it?” Finn asks. 

Rose thinks. “It’s still in development.”

Invested. Gamble to begin with, First Order paid heavily into the stake. Rebellion figures it out; goes back to the shop.

Stolen. Decision becomes twofold; cut losses. Resistance wins. Double down, Resistance buys time. Maybe the war’s over before they come up with another way. 

All DJ has to offer is a shrug. “G-good hand of Sabacc.”

Rose nods, once. Finn. Believes. 

DJ settles down into one of the chairs. Body heavy. Long day. Only a good ending if he gets paid. 

The two of them chatter. DJ closes his eyes. Listens. Cold toes on one side. Sometimes listening is valuable. Maybe this time, he doesn’t listen too hard.

-

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
